Summer Solstice 2010 - a reading (on YouTube)
It is winter in the Southern Hemisphere. The crescent moon tilts in the wrong direction, a shallow bowl whose water spills as moonlight across the plain at night.
Clans gather beneath an evening star, its golden torchlight guiding them through the long, dark journey back to summer. There are new shields and some long lost emblems interspersed with standards present from the beginning, sigils as immemorial as time. Totem animals adorn each tent, lions, elephants and eagles, pegasi and dragons, guiding spirits their people pray to through the night as they invoke the numen of their ancestors. They all celebrate in tribal colors, in dance as well as song.
The battle horns have sounded, drawing each clan's iconic warriors onto the field to engage in ritual combat. Their feet flash like lightning off a spear point, their footfalls echo like thunder across the plain. While their prophets murmur each name like a touchstone, the clans draw comfort from the repetition as the battle performs its rosary across the field. Veterans will fall as fresh, young warriors fill the gaps and are lifted onto the shoulders of their companions, paraded around the field.
While only one will lift their voice in victory, for a moment all the clans stand together, united beneath that distant star. Ubuntu: there can be no lauded victor without a host of the honorably defeated.
Slowly, the orange and blue, the furious reds, greens and golds will wash away into a savanna sunrise, the quadrennial danse macabre suspended for four more peaceful years. Until the battle horns sound again and recall those far-flung clans to another field half a world away to celebrate a summer festival beneath a winter's moon.
© 2010 Edward P. Morgan III
